Business 8th Edition by Marianne Jennings

تمرين 35

Peoples Bank and Trust Company is the conservator of the estate of Nellie Mitchell, a 96-year-old resident of Mountain Home, Arkansas, who operated a newsstand on the town square since 1963. Before that, she delivered newspapers on a paper route and, according to the evidence, still made deliveries to certain "downtown" business establishments and select customers.
It appears that Nellie, as she is known to almost everyone in this small Ozark Mountain town, is a town "landmark" or "treasure" She cared for herself and raised a family as a single parent for all those years on what must have been the meager earnings of a "paper girl."
Her newspaper stand was in a short, dead-end alley between two commercial buildings on the town square. She received permission to put a roof over the alley, and this newsstand was her sole means of support. Her tenacity was evident at trial when she was asked whether she lived with her adult daughter, Betty. She replied, "No, Betty lives with me."
In the October 2,1990, edition of the Sun, published by Globe International, Inc., there was a photograph of Nellie with a story entitled:
Special Delivery
World's oldest newspaper carrier, 101, quits because she's pregnant! I guess walking all those miles kept me young.
The "story" purports to be about a "paper-gal Audrey Wiles" in Stirling, Australia, who had been delivering papers for ninety-four years. Readers are told that Miss Wiles became pregnant by "Will," a "reclusive millionaire" she met on her newspaper route. "I used to put Will's paper in the door when it rained, and one thing just kind of led to another."
In words that could certainly have described Nellie Mitchell, the article, which was in the form and style of a factual newspaper account, in part said:
[S]he's become like a city landmark because nearly everyone at one time or another has seen her trudging down the road with a large stack of papers under her arm.
The photograph used in the October 2 edition of the Sun, of Nellie apparently "trudging down the road with a large stack of papers under her arm," had been used by the defendant in a reasonably factual and accurate article about Nellie published in another of the defendant's publications, the Examiner, in 1980.
Peoples Bank, on behalf of Nellie, filed suit against Globe for invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The jury awarded Nellie $650,000 in compensatory damages and $850,000 in punitive damages. Globe asked the court to reverse the verdict or, in the alternative, reduce the damages. Have any torts been committed? Describe them. Are the damages reasonable? [ Peoples Bank Trust Co. v Globe Int'l, Inc., 786 F. Supp. 791 (W.D. Ark. 1992)]